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Pension levy- whats your opinion
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nfl-fan wrote:
I’m curious about deflation…
Petrol – why are we still getting shafted at the Petrol Stations considering the price of oil?
Gas – huge increases the past few years, deflation won’t bring the price of gas down to any level of significance
Electricity – ditto Gas
Bus/Train/Other Travel Fares – on the up every year
A Loaf of Bread – prices have increased significantly in recent years due to the price of wheat
Car/Home Insurance – have these prices ever come down any way significantly?
Cigarettes & Alcohol – only ever increase
T.V Subscriptions such as Sky/NTL – Have these prices ever come down? I can only ever remember them going up
Car Tax – Anyone with a pre 2008 car is getting shafted because the new system more or less ignores their carbon emmissions
Telephone Bills – anyone notice Eircom dropping their prices recently? Line Rental is on the up all the time.Bar Cigarettes & Alcohol I’d consider most of the above standard living costs that most of us have to face on and none of them are coming down or even staying anyway static.
What are the living costs that will actually deflate in line with people’s take home pay? Can someone tell me?
J
Oh dont get me started on fheckin Car Tax and the new system . . .
all right then,
I have a 2004 2.2 diesel, the same car [few cosmetic mods] same engine, same emissions in 2008 has a reduction of
road tax of about €600.00 per year :evil:Fheck SIMI and the GREENS
i know i know im off topic now, but i had to rant.
phew, i feel a bit better now . . . :evil:
Shopping around for a better deal isn’t really what I’d class as deflation. That being said I saved 120 notes by shopping around for car insurance.
Petrol came down but it’s price at the pumps isn’t proportionate to reductions in oil prices.
Agree about the car tax Alan, ridiculous.
Sorry, but shopping around for a bargain doesn’t necessarily mean deflation as far as I am concerned. It just highlights price variances and doesn’t mean prices are dropping.
If AXA are 200 and AIG are 100 today then you can save 100.
Tomorrow AIG could be 120. You still save 80 but prices have gone up.
Shopping for a bargain isn’t necessarily deflation.
Just because there’s a price difference between the offering of two providers doesn’t necessarily mean prices have come down, it just means they are different.
Let’s agree to disagree.
Re inflation/deflation – my job is as a company buyer for an engineering firm. Prices are going down because of 2 reasons – one being the cost of element materials to make steel are dropping – it’s basic demand and supply but the second reason is pure competition. Companies are offering us material below the cost that they bought it at just to minimize the loss as the price that they originally bought the stock at is massively inflated versus current market prices. And as the demand due to the current situation is falling they are all fighting for business so are undercutting each other to maintain some movement. To us the price of some materials have dropped by 2/3rds. It’s a difficult situation when you know the decision to buy from one company or another can result in part to people who you regularly deal with losing their job.
So yes, competition at the scale that we’re about to see will result in deflation…as we shop around and our supplier has to make their pitch more attractive whether it be steel supplier or corner shop.
Alan.
There’s no doubt prices will come down. Demand and supply will dictate that.
But where the Average Joe is concerned, if you go back to my list of core household type bills, not much will change.
Luxury and non essentials will come down a lot, but the basic cost of living only ever goes up. Groceries are the only area, when it comes to your standard living costs, that really come down in price.
I’d be delighted if Sky, eircom, the ESB, the bin man and Bus Eireann all contacted me tomorrow to announce price cuts but it’s not going to happen. Apart from home heating and groceries, these are my core costs and they have all increased in recent times.
I’m sure I could get a good deal on a new car, but I wouldn’t spend the money, even if I had it, given the uncertainty that surrounds many of us at the mo.
Ps. ‘Public Sector Employee’ is a very general term.
Not every public sector worker has it cushy. Gotta feel for the bloke sweeping the street, the ambulance driver dealing with drunks, the nurse tending to the sick, the fireman risking his life and so on.
nfl-fan wrote:
Ps. ‘Public Sector Employee’ is a very general term.
Not every public sector worker has it cushy. Gotta feel for the bloke sweeping the street, the ambulance driver dealing with drunks, the nurse tending to the sick, the fireman risking his life and so on.
To say nothing of Community Wardens who take loads of sh1t on a daily basis, being verbally abused, assaulted with hammers, death threats, and having tyres slashed… I could go on.
Pat
On the subject of deflation, yes this term is bandied about inappropriately. We don’t have deflation currently. The CPI is running at just under plus 1%, having been higher in recent years. We may have deflation in the future (probably will have) but certainly haven’t had it yet.
1% means the general price level has risen by 1% in the past 12 months. Within that, Mortgage payments are down 10% and Energy costs are down 10%. On the upside, food prices are a good deal higher. On each of these important constituents, ireland is a price taker. We have no control over the price. Also on the upside are various govt related costs, travel, electricity, gas etc. Some of this is related to the oil price (there is a 12 month lag here usually). Some of it is because the govt is seeing huge declines in income taxes and stamp duty and needs to offset it elsewhere.
Bear in mind that wage levels indisputably grew much faster than inflation thorughout this decade (incl public service).
On the subject of petrol prices…..yes the oil price has fallen dramatically…yes the price at the pump is a lot higher than when the oil price was last at this level 3 years ago…..why? (i) because refinery costs remain very high (you don’t just pay the oil price, the cost of converting it into petrol is also there) and (ii) increased govt tax on fuel as of the last budget.
On subject of Public Service…am a bit surprised that so many people are uptight about ‘lack of efficiency’ in public service…..what do ye expect? that it will be a lean mean cutting machine, like Intel or Microsoft? Its the public service for Chrissakes….every public service in the world is inefficient compared to private entreprise. The Irish public service employs 17% of our workforce, that is exactly in line with the EU average and lower than the UK….on that measure our public service is no more/ no less efficient. If anyone as any other measures to challenge this, other than what they heard down the chipper, I would like to hear it.
The issue is that the government does not have the income to support the public service, it did last year but it doesn’t now. If public service wages don’t fall (right now) our national debt will spiral.
Politics, national and European wouldn’t be a strong point with me. So maybe someone could answer this – if we are a member state of the EU why are we alone right now looking after our own mess and where does the EU come in? Why has the EU nothing better to do than say for example put a 77.5% tax on fixings for the building industry (a generalized comment but I’m sure echoed many times)? Will the farmers still be paid NOT to grow anything in their fields to keep prices inflated? Are we really on our own now that the proverbial has hit the fan? Should we take the route of Sweden and pull away from the EU?
Alan
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